Revelation 11: The God Who Knows His Way Out of the Grave
Resurrection Sunday, 2021 -- Reformation OPC (AZ)
Introduction
What do you suppose the Devil hoped to accomplish? We know Satan put it into Judas’s heart to betray Christ. The plot of the Jewish leaders was clearly demonic, and the indifference and cruelty of the Romans who collaborated in Jesus’ crucifixion can only be the behavior of those whose hearts are in bondage, whose eyes are blind, and whose bodies are under the influence of dark forces that lie beyond the vision of our eyes. Satan orchestrated the betrayal, arrest, and execution of the Son of God, yet he knew Jesus was the Son of God. He was under no illusions. Every time Jesus came near a demonized person, the demon would rush forward, confess or acknowledge him as the Holy One, and submit to his commands. Even the demons believe and tremble. So it is not as though the Devil was ignorant of Jesus’ true identity. It cannot be that he imagined he could destroy the divine, eternal Son of God. What, then, was the point of the cross?
Contrary to imaginative portrayals of the passion, Satan didn’t know what Christ was doing in offering himself to die. He did not understand that this was an act of propitiation. He did not see that by killing the God-Man he was actually slitting his own throat and guaranteeing the ultimate triumph of God’s kingdom. These truths were announced in the Hebrew Bible, yes, but they were hidden in plain sight. The angels longed to understand what God foreordained, they longed to see it, because they did not understand it. No one but the Trinity did, until it was accomplished.
Satan must have believed the cross was to his advantage, and I assume it was because he thought the same things about the kingdom of God that all the Jews did: that it would be an earthly kingdom established at Jerusalem. Perhaps he could not end the Son of God, but he could crush any change of him ruling as a King like David. Or so he thought. So he threw Jesus into the briar patch, which as it turns out is exactly where the Lord intended to go all along.
The Event on Which Everything Depends: The Resurrection of Jesus
The resurrection of Christ is the story that never gets old, the story we should recount to our children, our grandchildren, and ourselves for as long as we live. It is the story of our Exodus, the true Passover, the day God overcame sin, death, and the Devil forever. The victory was won, the kingdom of darkness was decisively defeated, and the salvation of God’s saints was assured.
The facts of the story are simple. On the third day after Jesus’ crucifixion, early on the first day of the week, Christ rose from the dead and left Hades in a glorified, imperishable body. The stone which sealed the entrance of the tomb was rolled back, an angel descended in power, and the guards who watched the grave fainted with fear. When a group of women arrived a short time later, the guards were gone, and they found the open tomb but not Christ’s body. Angels appeared and spoke to them. They ran to find the male disciples and were met by the risen Jesus before they got very far. When the men finally arrived, they saw a tomb that was unoccupied but not empty. The burial wrappings that had been left behind and the face cloth that was neatly folded testified that this was not a robbery or mystery but rather the fulfillment of prophecy. Christ really was alive. He appeared to many disciples over the next forty days, meeting and eating with them and speaking of the work they would carry on after his ascension to the Father. He would be absent in body but would be present with them through the Holy Spirit who would come and empower them in their work of proclaiming and establishing God’s kingdom.
Some wise fools imagine the resurrection of Jesus is merely a fantastic tale, an origin story whose real value and power lies in symbolism disconnected from history. We all know, of course, that people don’t really rise from the dead. Resurrection is only a metaphor. What’s important is to understand what it means. Never has someone come so close to grasping truth only to miss it at the last second. Of course resurrection is a metaphor; it’s repeatedly used that way in Scripture. But it isn’t Christ’s resurrection that is the metaphor. Christ’s resurrection is the reality that all of the other resurrection metaphors point to. We are raised with Christ in regeneration and baptism, not bodily, true enough, but spiritually. But if there is no historical resurrection, there is no metaphor. Anyone who thinks he can have a metaphorical resurrection without an historical one only proves he does not understand how metaphors work.
The Bible presents the resurrection as a historical reality. It was a real event two thousand years ago. It was prefigured by many other historical types of resurrection, and it is associated with many metaphorical comparisons and theological applications. But make no mistake, if Christ was not raised, then Christianity is a false and pointless religion. You might as well be an Epicurean, or if you are more inclined to discipline and virtue, a Stoic or a Buddhist. But if Christ did not really rise from the dead, then there is no forgiveness of sins, no hope of life after death, no transcendent point to anything you do here. We are bags of highly evolved meat, monkeys pretending to live meaningful lives, stardust colliding with stardust and trying to convince ourselves it is important.
And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty. Yes, and we are found false witnesses of God, because we have testified of God that He raised up Christ, whom He did not raise up—if in fact the dead do not rise. For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable. (1Cor. 15:14-19)
The Christian faith, the Christian Church, and the meaning of the world ultimately depend on the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. If Jesus was raised, then there is a God, we are made in his image, and we will one day answer to him. If Jesus rose, then all of the dead will rise again one day and exist forever either in the glory of the new heavens and earth or in Hell. If Jesus is alive, then we have pardon, peace, a purpose for living, and power to do so, because we have a Mediator with God in the heavens. But if he was not raised, life is pointless; we should all just go home.
The Church’s Story: Death and Resurrection
These are the facts of the case, and it is important that we recite them on a regular basis. We need to be clear on the centrality, priority, and necessity of the resurrection of Jesus. But today we are looking at Revelation 11, and you may be wondering why. There’s no explicit reference in that chapter to the resurrection of Christ, though his crucifixion is mentioned in v.8. But surely you will have noticed the implicit comparison between the experience of these witnesses and the suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ. It is not a coincidence that they rise again on the third day, though the three and a half days have an even broader significance than just that analogy. I want to think about Revelation 11 with you today because it is a study in the Church’s life, ministry, and history in miniature. This is our story: death and resurrection, just like Jesus.
There are many different interpretations of the Book of Revelation, and I do not intend to get down in the weeds today and deal with all the interpretive questions. Depending on what you think about the date, context, and perspective of the book, you may interpret this chapter in many different ways. But the lesson I want to draw out of it should be acknowledged by every school of thought, so that no matter what you think the specific context is, the broader application remains.
In the chapter we have several important events. First, the Temple is measured. This draws on an earlier prophecy in Ezekiel 40-43 in which the eschatological Temple was measured, and it is consistent with a common feature in biblical prophecy in which before judgment is poured out, God assures his people that he knows them, marked them, and will keep them through the storm. Second, there is a prophecy that the holy city will be overrun by the nations for forty-two months. Here we are reminded of Psalm 79:1-3:
O God, the nations have come into Your inheritance; Your holy temple they have defiled; They have laid Jerusalem in heaps. The dead bodies of Your servants They have given as food for the birds of the heavens, The flesh of Your saints to the beasts of the earth. Their blood they have shed like water all around Jerusalem, And there was no one to bury them.
Third, the two witnesses are introduced and described. They are associated with the olive trees and lampstands found in Zechariah 3-4 and wield power like Moses and Elijah. The story is then told: how the witnesses prophesy, the beast rises out of the pit and kills them in the city of wickedness, their bodies are left exposed on the street, the world rejoices over their death and exchanges gifts in merry celebration of the silencing of God’s messengers, then God raises the two witnesses from death, they ascend into heaven, and judgment falls on the City of Man.
Who are these two witnesses? Some may associate them with future, end-times characters, but they are clearly described in ways that associate them with God’s prophetic witness throughout redemptive history. Moses and Elijah, the two olive trees, the two lampstands, the King and Priest in Zechariah who stand before the Lord and who are opposed by Satan. The two witnesses are the testimony of the Law and prophets, and by extension, the faithful Church as a witness to the world.
“In [Jesus’] death, the entire Covenant community and its Testimony lie dead in the streets of Jerusalem, under the Curse.” -Chilton, The Days of Vengeance, 283
But look at what happens. Just when it seems the cause is defeated, the prophets silenced, and all hope lost, what occurs? Resurrection. The witnesses rise. The Church rises. Satan tried to defeat Christ, but he failed. He tried to destroy the Church by means of persecution, but it grew stronger. Revelation 11 is a picture of the Church in the present age living in the power of the resurrection. We have been raised with Christ to eschatological life. We may be killed, but never conquered.
“Through the resurrection of Christ, the Church and her Testimony became unstoppable. In union with Christ in His Ascension to glory (Eph. 2:6), they went up to heaven in the Cloud, and their enemies beheld them. The Witnesses did not survive the persecutions; they died. But in Christ’s resurrection they rose to power and dominion that existed not by might, nor by power, but by God’s Spirit, the very breath of life from God.” --Chilton, 284
“The story of the Two Witnesses is therefore the story of the witnessing Church, which has received the divine command to Come up here and has ascended with Christ into the Cloud of heaven, to the Throne (Eph. 1:20-22; 2:6; Heb. 12:22-24); She now possesses an imperial grant to exercise rule over the ends of the earth, discipling the nations to the obedience of faith (Matt. 28:18-20; Rom. 1:5).” --Chilton, 284
The Religion of Resurrection
Christianity is a religion of resurrection. This is not true of any other world religion, nor of false religions that represent themselves as if they were Christian (e.g. Mormons). Hinduism is a religion of reincarnation, Buddhism a religion of ethics, Judaism and Islam religions of tradition carried on by formal practices. We’re not merely identifying doctrines in these cases but defining characteristics. Resurrection defines Christianity. It is more than just a tenet of the faith. Yes, we believe in Jesus’ historical resurrection. Yes, we believe there will be a general resurrection of all the dead on the last day. But resurrection is more than just events on a timeline: it is the defining character of the Christian Church and of her faith.
The title for our sermon today is The God Who Knows His Way Out of the Grave, and that language is taken from The Everlasting Man by G. K. Chesterton. This is one of Chesterton’s most important works, an historical apologetic for the Christian faith and one of the major influences to C. S. Lewis’s conversion. In his Prefatory Note, GKC explains the thesis of the book “is that those who say that Christ stands side by side with similar myths, and his religion side by side with similar religions, are only repeating a very stale formula contradicted by a very striking fact.” Everlasting Man argues that Christ is the true myth to which all other make-believe myths only point or echo.
In the last chapter, Chesterton describes the five times in history the Christian Church died.
“Christendom has had a series of revolutions and in each one of them Christianity has died. Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave. … Europe has been turned upside down over and over again; and … at the end of each of these revolutions the same religion has again been found on top. The Faith is always converting the age, not as an old religion but as a new religion." --G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man, 250
“The Faith is not a survival…. It has not survived; it has returned again and again in this Western world of rapid change and institutions perpetually perishing. Europe, in the tradition of Rome, was always trying revolution and reconstruction; rebuilding a universal republic. And it always began by rejecting this old stone and ended by making it the head of the corner; by bringing it back from the rubbish-heap to make it the crown of the capitol.” --GKC, 252
“At least five times… the Faith has to all appearance gone to the dogs. In each of these five cases it was the dog that died.” --GKC, 255
Pay attention to what Chesterton says there. Think about how it relates to what we saw in Revelation 11. The Christian Church can be killed; it cannot be conquered. It may lie slain in the street as the wicked dance and celebrate with delight, but it will rise again. Death could not hold the Son of God, and it will not be able to hold his Body, the Church, no matter how violently the Evil One tries to put it down. The Church’s history is not characterized by persistence in the face of adversity. It is characterized by death and resurrection, again and again. The Church lives in the power of Christ’s resurrection throughout the present age.
Who would have believed the Church could survive early Roman persecutions? Christians were martyred in gruesome and malicious ways. Yet rather than being stamped out, Christianity spread like wildfire. Tertullian rightly said, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” In the Middle Ages the visible Church became corrupt in many ways. Doctrines of men and human traditions obscured the purity of the Gospel in many places. Church offices were bought and sold while leaders were corrupt in their morals and doctrine. Could the Church survive this pollution? Would orthodoxy perish under the weight of error? Chesterton says in the same chapter (p.251):
“I suspect that we should find several occasions when Christendom was thus to all appearance hollowed out from within by doubt and indifference, so that only the old Christian shell stood as the pagan shell had stood so long. But the difference is that in every such case, the sons were fanatical for the faith where the fathers had been slack about it.”
Now being Roman Catholic, Chesterton would not see the Reformation as part of the providential pattern of resurrection and rebirth--he actually cites the Counter-Reformation as evidence of it--but he recognizes the medieval Church seemed to die under the influence of error and apathy, but time and again the Church rose with the resurrection power of Christ working in her by the Holy Spirit. It’s not that the Church survived every battle. She simply would not stay dead. She lives in Christ.
The Eucatastrophe of Human History
The resurrection of Christ is only the greatest in a series of acts God loves to perform. The Bible and human history are full of examples of salvation suddenly being accomplished in the climatic moment of disaster and destruction. The Lord waited until the Israelites were pinned between the Red Sea and the Egyptian army before he parted the water and enabled the people to walk through on dry land. He waited until the barbarians were literally at the gates of Samaria and Jerusalem multiple times before saving the cities from destruction. Other times he brought salvation not at the last minute but an hour after defeat. God’s kindness in Joseph’s life always seemed to show up a good while after his persecutors did their worst. Where was God’s deliverance when Job’s flocks and herds were raided and his children were all killed? Why didn’t the Lord protect David from Saul slandering and hunting him as a criminal? Jonah was thrown in the sea, eaten by a fish, and at least figuratively (I think actually) died before God saved him by induced vomiting. We love the stories of how the Lord protected Daniel in the lions’ den and his three friends in the fiery furnace, but have you noticed God didn’t send angels to protect them until they were already in those places?!? You may say God’s timing is perfect, but I’d say the record indicates it is usually running late, sometimes very late! If the Lord is so eager to protect and preserve his beloved, you must find some way of explaining Jesus’ behavior in John 11. When he heard his friend Lazarus was gravely ill, the One who healed so many others stayed two more days where he was. He did not go to his friend until Lazarus had already died! I hope these examples, to which many could be added, suffice to show God does not save merely at the last minute. He often saves after whatever we hoped to be saved from has already happened. That is what happens on the cross. The Father saved his Son, not from death but by death. He rescued his Church, not by sparing them from judgment, but by bringing them through judgment in Jesus’ hellish experience on the cross.
We need a term for this phenomena, and since there wasn’t one in English, Professor J. R. R. Tolkien created one in his well-known essay, “On Fairy-stories.” He called it eucatastrophe, a compound word he created from the Greek parts for good and destruction.
“The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of the happy ending: or more correctly of the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous ‘turn’ (for there is no true end to any fairy-tale): this joy, which is one of the things which fairy-stories can produce supremely well, is not essentially 'escapist', nor 'fugitive'. In its fairy-tale—or otherworld—setting, it is a sudden and miraculous grace: never to be counted on to recur. It does not deny the existence of dyscatastrophe, of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance; it denies (in the face of much evidence, if you will) universal final defeat and in so far is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.
“It is the mark of a good fairy-story, of the higher or more complete kind, that however wild its events, however fantastic or terrible the adventures, it can give to child or man that hears it, when the ‘turn’ comes, a catch of the breath, a beat and lifting of the heart, near to (or indeed accompanied by) tears, as keen as that given by any form of literary art, and having a peculiar quality.” --J. R. R. Tolkien, “On Fairy-Stories,” The Tolkien Reader, 85-86
Tolkien, a devout Roman Catholic, recognized that the whole story of Christ was a Eucatastrophe, a sudden and miraculous grace that springs from nowhere, saves the whole world, and brings joy to the heart of everyone who hears and accepts it. The difference is that while the Gospel is a kind of fairy-story, this is the true story, the one which all other fairy stories are meant to point us to.
“The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels—peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: ‘mythical’ in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. But this story has entered History and the primary world; the desire and aspiration of sub-creation has been raised to the fulfillment of Creation. The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy. It has pre-eminently the ‘inner consistency of reality’. There is no tale ever told that men would rather find was true, and none which so many sceptical men have accepted as true on its own merits. For the Art of it has the supremely convincing tone of Primary Art, that is, of Creation. To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath.” --Tolkien, 88-89
Pastoral Application and Conclusion
God loves to bring salvation out of disaster, and understanding that helps us know how we are to live in a world that seems constantly poised on the brink of disaster. We must recognize we have been here before, the Church has fallen to false doctrine, immorality, idolatry, and persecution. The Church has died, many times, but because she died with Christ two thousand years ago, she will always live again. Death cannot hold her, because it did not hold him, and the Church is his Body, united by the Spirit to the never-dying, immortal Son. The Church may descend to the grave, but she serves a God who knows his way out of it.
Christians in the West are living through a difficult moment--though if our brethren in the ancient Church or even in parts of Africa and Asia today could see our circumstances, they might wonder what we are complaining about! Nevertheless, we see what is happening in our nation, in our culture, and even in the visible Church, and it is right to be concerned and alarmed. We see a level of self-destructive insanity that cannot be maintained. It must and will end, either in ruin or revival. We might readily say with the Psalmist: “I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living” (Ps 27:13). But we do not lose heart, because we know that we will see his goodness. We do not hope in political victories. We do not trust in conservative policies. We do not rest in earthly resources. Our hope and comfort is in the risen, reigning, and returning Son of God.
“We do not pretend that the fate of the world is in our hands. That way lies madness, being a burden that no human being can bear. Yet, we are not condemned to resignation and quietism, still less to despair. We are not the lords of history and do not control its outcome, but we have assurance that there is a lord of history and he controls its outcome. We need a theological interpretation of disaster, one that recognizes that God acts in such events as captivities, defeats, and crucifixions. The Bible can be interpreted as a string of God’s triumphs disguised as disasters. Those events seemed to say not only that people and nations have failed but that God has failed. Only the prophetic word that both explained historical events and provided assurances that God is the lord of history could dispel the terror borne by such an appearance.”
--Herbert Schlossberg, Idols for Destruction, 304
